A pediatrician's look inside facility for migrant children
Frozen sandwiches, 24/7 lighting, and ceiling-high metal fencing are among the conditions migrant children separated from their parents typically will face in federal detention centers, said an expert from the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics who has visited a site in Texas.
Julie Linton, a pediatrician, visited the Department of Homeland Security central processing station in McAllen, Texas, in 2016. Then housing unaccompanied minors and families detained after crossing the border with Mexico, the facility recently has received many of the 2,000 children taken from their parents as a result of a new Trump administration immigration policy, The Associated Press reported.
“The lights were on 24/7, which is disorienting,” said Linton, co-chair of the academy's Immigrant Health Special Interest Group. She described chain-link dividers that reached the ceiling, floor mats and silver, thermal blankets. Linton spoke with children released from the center who described eating “sandwiches so cold they were frozen.”
For children to lose their parents under such conditions is “profoundly stressful” and “can adversely affect the health and well-being of children,” Linton said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions this spring instituted a “zero tolerance” policy for people entering the U.S. illegally. Many children separated from their parents are being detained near entry points, but earlier hundreds of children were placed in U.S. Office of Refugee Settlement licensed care facilities.
Some migrant children separated from their parents at the border are being cared for at some of Des Plaines-based child-care organization Maryville's facilities throughout northeastern Illinois. In addition to other services, it provides services to children who have arrived in the U.S. from other countries without an adult.
Children in such circumstances are placed in one of Maryville's residential centers and provided with therapy with a clinical specialist, legal help, certified bilingual education, access to religious services and socialization with other children, director of communications Marcy O. Jensen said.